Is large-scale vegetable plant associations possible?

Finding solutions to produce more sustainably for the benefit of overall health is a major challenge that scientists as well as farmers and gardeners are trying to address. However, agroecology responds to these issues by stimulating natural regulations favorable to ecosystem services, in particular through plant diversification. Vegetable plant associations (APP), agroecological practices developed in gardens and in urban and peri-urban agriculture, combine high yield and biocontrol. But scientific, agronomic and social obstacles are slowing down their adoption by farmers.

In order to offer “turnkey” APP solutions Mathieu Hanemian, INRAE ​​researcher at the Laboratory of plant-microbe-environment interactions (LIPME) and Camille Dumat, professor at Toulouse INP and researcher at the Dynamics and ecology of agriforestry landscapes laboratory (DYNAFOR ) are coordinating 2 agroecological co-innovation projects to promote sustainable market gardening production, in collaboration with Anaïs Botello, design engineer and project coordinator (see box). The objective is to study APPs in multiple dimensions by the community of actors in the society-research-training continuum in the Toulouse region.

The first step of the process consists of carrying out an initial inventory of APPs and other agroecological practices in a panel of 50 gardens and 5 varied market gardens. As well as the study of the motivations associated with these practices and their transmission between the different actors.

A participatory APP experiment, co-constructed during workshops, was also implemented in 2024 and will be followed for two more seasons on urban agriculture sites. The key components of these socio-ecosystems will be analyzed, in particular the agrobiological transformations and the practices of the actors. This work will make it possible to generate interdisciplinary scientific field data integrating the complexity of socio-agronomic processes.

Ultimately, the results including directly actionable APP solutions will be valued by the different actors (market gardeners, gardeners, and scientists) thus contributing to transmission and dissemination thanks to the scientific, educational and media channels of the structures.